


Portait of a Glowering Girl

by futile_the_winds



Category: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, Fluff, Forced Bonding, Friends to Lovers, Héloïse is emotionally vulnerable and will be comforted, Marianne is a tortured jock with a secret soft side, Rowing, unlikely friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28169442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futile_the_winds/pseuds/futile_the_winds
Summary: The year is 1912. At elite Gaster College, an all girls' boarding school in England, teachers are worried about Marianne. Dedicated only to sport and art, she is both most unladylike and very lonely. Teachers are also worried about Héloïse. Guarded and still reeling from her sister's death, she is a recluse and an enigma. The two girls are forced to spend half an hour together each evening, in the hope that Héloïse's manners will rub off on Marianne, and that Marianne's stony silence will encourage Héloïse to open up. Slowly, the two girls open up to each other - and to so much more...
Relationships: Héloïse & Sophie (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Héloïse/Marianne (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 41





	1. A Forced Companionship

At Gaster College, three things were valued – academic success, good manners, and noble breeding. Marianne had none of these things. Academically, she was at best mediocre. Her parents were wealthy enough to pay the fees for the expensive school, but not wealthy enough to be nobles. These perceived shortcomings meant that, despite being at Gaster for five years, she had few close friends.

Marianne excelled at two things – art and rowing. Oh, and at disappointing her parents and teachers at every turn. Her strength and determination carried the rowing crew to victory at many regattas, but she was still seen as a discredit to Gaster. In every team photograph, the other girls would be standing on the podium, well-groomed and beaming, whilst Marianne lingered somewhere, her dark hair and dark eyes glowering. No matter where she was positioned, she always stood out. She was too tall and too broad. When off the river, she strode around school with a constant air of furious distraction, her hair escaping from a bun and her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her school-dress. No matter how many times the matrons ironed her blouses or mended her dresses, Marianne always looked scruffy.

She had a few friends, made through rowing. The coxswain, a chatty girl at least two head shorter than Marianne. A handful of rowers. Their conversations never reached far beyond the boathouse, but Marianne did not mind. She was not sociable. Why should she be? Lost in the middle of a large family, she had never been given a chance to speak. Lost in the middle of a swirl of girls, all wealthier and clever than she, she never needed or wanted to stand out.

And yet she always did.

There was another girl at Gaster who also sought to slip by, unnoticed. Heloise. She was nobler than Marianne, and was thought by everyone to be prettier, with blonde hair and graceful limbs and grey-blue eyes the colour of sea-glass. Despite this, she was left alone. Her older sister had attended Gaster some years before, and had risen to the rank of Head Girl. She had excelled academically, and the expectations of her parents and teachers and peers had been hung upon her like heavy garlands until she could bear it no longer. She had been in the grave for three years, now, and Heloise had not recovered. She had always been the more reclusive one, the shadow behind her sister’s bright light. Now, she was just a shadow, guarded and withdrawn almost to the point of seeming rude.

Teachers worried about Heloise, but it was a genuine, quiet anxiety, rather than the sighing almost-anger that Marianne involuntarily provoked. They wondered if Heloise might slip down the same path as her sister. They tried to coax her into talking, but she never yielded a word.

Letters were exchanged between the headmistress and Heloise’s parents. The girl needed a friend, they agreed. A confidante. All aristocratic ladies had confidantes, trustworthy gossips and polished companions.

However, the headmistress – who had a deep understanding of the ecosystems of an all-girls’ boarding school – knew that to attach Heloise to a group of her wealthiest and most respected peers would end in disaster. Those girls were all tied up in themselves and their dramas to take such a quiet, almost sullen girl under their elegant wings.

The headmistress wracked her brains in between her other teacherly duties. She wanted what was best for Heloise, but she also had a school to run, and that school had a reputation to uphold.

One autumn evening, shortly after the beginning of term, she was sitting at her bureau and dealing with some documents. There was a knock on the door.

‘Come on,’ the headmistress said, barely looking up.

A young teacher, a new appointment to the post of Art mistress – entered. She stood before her superior’s desk, her hands twitching nervously at the hem of her paint-splattered apron.

‘I’m worried,’ she said, scurrying over the words, ‘about Marianne. Do you know her?’

‘Of course,’ said the headmistress. ‘I know all of my girls.’

‘Sorry!’ the Art mistress blurted. ‘I didn’t mean –’

‘No offence taken. We all know Marianne. She’s hardly subtle.’

‘She’s so lonely. I’ve never seen her talk to another soul. All day, it looks as though she has a ten-tonne burden on her shoulders. It only seems to lift when she paints and when she rows. But even then, there’s this – this – anger in the flick of her hands, the curve of her fingers. It cannot go on.’

Marianne’s face swam before the headmistress, closed-off and pale with those unnervingly intense eyes. Suddenly, another, fairer face appeared beside it. Heloise. The headmistress chastised herself for not thinking of it sooner.

She thanked the Art mistress for coming to her, and assured her that something would be done.

Heloise was summoned.

She sat before the headmistress’s desk, perfectly still.

‘I am giving you a friend,’ the headmistress said. ‘Think of her as a mentor, a confidante. Someone to talk to.’

Heloise said nothing, but her silence was not one of protest.

‘You will meet her tomorrow, after supper. The two of you can go for a walk in the grounds, or perhaps retire to the library. The arrangement will do you good.’

Heloise left. Marianne was summoned.

‘I am giving you a friend,’ the headmistress said. ‘Think of her as a mentor –’

‘I don’t need a mentor,’ Marianne replied. ‘I’ve got friends.’

‘That is quite beside the point. A – a – a number of my colleagues have told me that they are troubled by your lack of manners, for want of a better word. You are apparently becoming too much of a recluse. Too much sport and too much art and a lack of female company has made you most unladylike, and we will rectify this situation together.’

‘What if I don’t want to be rectified?’

‘You will meet your new friend tomorrow, after dinner. You may go for a walk in the grounds. Perhaps she may take you to the library.’

‘Who is it?’

‘Heloise,’ the headmistress replied.

‘Really?’ Marianne sighed, thinking of that dainty, quiet girl. Even if they wanted to talk, they had nothing in common.

However, Marianne knew better than to argue. Letters could be sent home to her parents. Punishments could be imposed.

Sighing, she left the headmistress’s office and went back to class.


	2. Rocks in the River

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heloise learns to talk, while Marianne learns to trust.

The next twenty-four hours was a slow procession from her dormitory to the refectory to class to the library to class. Dinner, however, passed like sand through her fingers.

As arranged, Heloise stood outside the double doors into the library, waiting for her new companion to appear. Marianne was late.

Suddenly, she was there. Heloise heard her before she saw her – fast, stomping steps in the hallway, the rustle of a school-dress. Marianne appeared, her face framed with strands of dark hair that had, as always, escaped from the school-mandated hairstyle.

‘Good evening,’ Heloise said, timid in the other girl’s presence. Marianne said nothing, and simply glowered at the smaller girl who was supposed to be her new companion.

Un ange passe.

‘I suppose we should…walk or something,’ Heloise said. ‘That’s why we were sent here.’

‘I don’t want to,’ Marianne said, ‘but I suppose we have no choice.’

Their allocated half-hour of time together crawled by in stony silence. Occasionally, Heloise would ask a question, and Marianne would respond either with a stare or a single word.

The next evening passed in a similar manner, as did the one after. A week of evening meetings, and still no change.

The two girls established an unspoken routine. They would meet at the doors to the library, then walk out into the school’s expansive grounds as the sun began to set. They would walk down the drive, then through the woods to the river, where Marianne would look at the running water with hungry eyes. Then, they’d cut across back to the school, through the meadow and across the landscaped lawn.

Marianne didn’t mind the silence. She spent the walks deep in thought, drinking in the gentle landscape and wondering how best to paint it. Occasionally, she’d glance sideways at Heloise. She had never painted a portrait before. It might be a good challenge.

Heloise, on the other hand, hated the silence. It had a heaviness to it that unnerved her. and Marianne’s dark eyes roamed their surroundings like a fire searching for fuel. Heloise wasn’t sure why, but she slowly found herself wanting nothing more than for her sullen companion to just _speak_ to her.

September faded into October like a flame shrinking to an ember. Still, they walked in silence.

It was the twenty-eighth of October. The two girls stood on the riverbank as the sun set. Marianne stooped down and picked up a handful of small, round stones. One by one, she hurled them into the water, fascinated at how the ripples tore the smooth surface of the water and at how they plunged to its depths.

Once certain that Marianne was looking firmly at the water, Heloise snuck a look at her unwilling companion. Marianne’s profile was outlined by the glow of the setting sun, and her hair glowed almost red in the fading light.

Suddenly, Heloise could bear it no longer.

‘Speak to me!’ she suddenly said, turning to face the taller, stronger girl. ‘Speak!’

Marianne did not speak.

‘At least look at me! Just fucking look at me!’

Marianne turned on her heel to face Heloise. ‘I never thought such foul words could come from such a posh, pretty mouth,’ she retorted, half-smiling, half-sneering.

Heloise found a rush of colour raced to her cheeks at the word ‘pretty’, but pushed that fact to the back of her mind. ‘We were made to do this because we’re both so lonely,’ she said, shocked by how angry and pleading she sounded. ‘We might as well talk to each other.’

‘I’m not lonely,’ Marianne said.

‘I know you are,’ Heloise replied, thinking of how Marianne haunted the school and its grounds, searching for the solace it seemed she could only find on the river or through art. ‘Anyone can see.’

‘Girls like me don’t get lonely. I have my friends at rowing. I have my world. What more do I need?’

‘After my sister died, I was lonelier than I ever thought possible. It wasn’t like a wound, or a bruise. It was like my whole consciousness – my entire existence – was upended and torn to pieces. I didn’t speak to anyone. I couldn’t. I was too angry. I was too determined to be alone.’

Marianne looked away and said nothing.

‘I’ve never told anyone that,’ Heloise went on, ‘not a soul. I’ve opened up to you, and you won’t even look my way.’

Marianne turned around, and Heloise saw that she was crying. Silently, Marianne handed her a rock. Heloise gently threw it into the river. Marianne handed her another, and she threw it a little harder. And another. And another.

They walked back to school in companionable silence.

With each day that passed, Heloise opened up a little more. Marianne always responded kindly, but with few words. Heloise began to look a little healthier – the furrow between her eyebrows gradually disappeared, and she was seen to smile occasionally.

Marianne was never far from her mind. Now, at mealtimes, Heloise’s eyes sought Marianne. In chapel, Heloise – once a perfect model of quiet piety and devotion – could not focus on her prayers. Instead, she would kneel and clasp her hands together like all the other girls, whilst thinking of the evening walk that lay ahead at the end of the day.

October folded into November, and the sun began to set earlier and earlier. Now, the two girls walked in darkness.


	3. Evening Prayer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the love so far! This is my first time publishing fic, so I'm so grateful for all the kudos and reads. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

They were ambling through the woods one night, the air threaded with the smell of distant smoke and fallen leaves.

‘I’ve talked enough,’ Heloise said, with new confidence. ‘Why don’t you ever tell me about anything?’

‘I just don’t have anything to say,’ Marianne replied, slipping back into her old sullenness.

They walked further, until they reached the riverbank. And then Marianne finally spoke.

‘The reason I don’t want to tell you anything,’ she said, ‘isn’t because I don’t trust you. It’s because I – I don’t want us to trust each other. I don’t want us to fall into an easy friendship.’

‘Why?’

‘Because…I always fall…’ Marianne tailed off, lowering her eyes and looking away.

Heloise looked back at Marianne with wide eyes.

‘I always fall in love,’ Marianne continued. ‘There. Hate me. Run. I don’t blame you.’

Marianne’s heart raced in her ribcage, and memories of dozens of fractured friendships swirled before her eyes – quiet friendships that had started to feel like something more, a move made, rebuffed and regretted, things slowly falling apart… Marianne didn’t want to do this again. She’d done it a hundred times. She didn’t want to subject Heloise to the awkward torture.

‘But what if…’ Heloise began, feeling awake for the first time in years, ‘what if…I’ve already fallen?’

Marianne stared at the smaller girl, speechless and confused. ‘Trust me,’ she said, ‘you don’t want to do this.’

‘What if I want to?’

Her stony face cracking into a tiny smile, Marianne half-closed her eyes. ‘Heloise,’ she whispered, ‘can I kiss you?’

Heloise did not answer, instead rising to her tiptoes and kissing the other girl gently on the lips.

The first kiss was a blessing, the second a prayer, the third a sacrament.

Every evening became an act of worship. As soon as the two girls were out of sight of the school, Marianne’s seemingly impenetrable façade crumbled. She would tell Heloise about what it was to be forgotten, or what it was to fall in love too easily. Sometimes, Heloise would hold her hand. Often, they would stop to kiss.

Teachers noticed the change in the two girls. Heloise sometimes laughed in lessons, and even joked around with her classmates. Marianne’s face took on an unnameable, softer quality, and her dark, messy hair and peat-brown eyes were no longer burningly intense, but instead infinitely deep. Her once sardonic sneer of a smile felt more genuine. Her voice no longer sounded as harsh as it had.

The two girls began spending time together outside their walks – snatched moments in the library, or in classrooms after the day’s lessons had finished. No-one suspected a thing – or, if they did, they allowed it. Such relations were far more common at schools like Gaster than one might think.

The Christmas ball – arranged by the school to mark the end of term – approached. Marianne had eschewed the event throughout her time at Gaster College, uncomfortable at the idea of dressing up just to hover at the edge of the room. This year, however, Heloise asked her to attend, and she said yes. Marianne’s mother was delighted when her daughter wrote home, asking for a dress.

Marianne readied herself with some difficulty, lacing herself into her stays and surrounding herself with petticoats before slipping on her dress, cut from russet taffeta. She wrestled her hair into a bun, and the other girls in her dormitory marvelled at this new Marianne. She let them fuss over her, no longer feeling the need to push them away.

She had not changed completely. She went downstairs to the refectory – transformed into a ballroom with a few festive garlands of holly – late. Most of the other girls were dancing already, laughing and spinning each other around. Heloise was waiting by the doorway, leant against the wall.

Marianne was breathless at the sight of her. She looked so…proper. She was wearing a green satin dress that left her shoulders exposed, and Marianne was almost embarrassed to find that she could not take her eyes off them.

‘Good evening,’ Heloise said, trying not to laugh at Marianne’s face.

‘Dance?’

They danced, chastely and as they were expected to.

Then, in a moment of unspoken, gleeful conspiracy, they retreated to the dark hallway behind the refectory, where they danced in a more tender way, one that would have shocked the others in its silent intimacy. Their dresses rustled in the near-silence, a gentle whisper that fell into harmony with the distant music from the ball.

Suddenly, Marianne was taking Heloise’s hand and they were running down the hallway and up the stairs to Marianne’s deserted dormitory.

‘Are we –’

‘If you want to.’

‘I want to. Very much.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh, shut up and kiss me.’

*

‘Do all lovers feel as though they’re inventing something?’ Heloise whispered afterwards. Marianne draped her arm across her and pulled her into the warmth of her side. After a quiet age, they dressed in their petticoats, stays and stockings.

‘You ruined my hair,’ Marianne said, trying to restrain a chuckle. ‘I tried so hard.’

‘I like it when your hair is a mess,’ Heloise said, reaching up and tangling her fingers in Marianne’s hair.

They sat on the wooden floor, their petticoats billowing around them.

‘The twenty-eight,’ Marianne said. ‘The twenty-eighth of September. That’s the day you spoke to me. That’s the day you broke me.’

‘That was the first day I was ever honest. I never want to forget it.’

‘Me neither.’

Heloise looked down at Marianne’s bare arms, then bent down and kissed her wrists and hands, the rowing callouses on her hands hard against the softness of her lips.

‘Come here,’ Marianne whispered, reaching into the top drawer of her nightstand and removing her fountainpen. Heloise moved closer, the top of her head almost underneath Marianne’s chin. Marianne removed the lid from her pen and, using her left hand, gently drew back Heloise’s hair from her right ear. Then, very carefully, she wrote the number twenty-eight on the white skin above her ear, before letting her hair fall back over it.

‘There,’ she said, ‘now you’ll never forget it. Well, until you wash your hair.’

‘I never knew you could be so romantic,’ Heloise said. ‘I didn’t know you had it in you.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Marianne said, loving it and never wanting it to end.


	4. Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girls spend the Christmas holidays together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! I was busy with school and college applications, but everything is sorted now! I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it!

The term ended. Marianne invited Heloise to come and stay at her family home for the holidays. Heloise wrote to her mother, asking for permission. Her mother – surprised but happy that her daughter had finally made a friend – gave her consent, and so the two girls took the train up to Marianne’s parents’ house in Yorkshire.

‘It isn’t like your house,’ Marianne said as the train pulled into the little country station. She had never visited Heloise’s family home, but could visualise it perfectly. A London townhouse, with art on the walls and velvet couches and maids around every corner.

‘You don’t need to worry,’ Heloise replied, slightly hurt by Marianne’s doubts but completely understanding. ‘If it’s anywhere as beautiful as you…’

‘You’re embarrassing me!’

They were met at the station by the driver, who drove them the three miles to Gliddon Hall. There, Marianne’s parents stood on the front steps, awaiting their daughter and her new friend.

Marianne hugged them. Heloise behaved perfectly, shaking their hands and introducing herself. They silently marvelled at the fact that their daughter had made such a well-mannered friend.

The next week passed in a happy reverie. The house was, in Marianne’s eyes, shabby. She had always noticed how threadbare the rugs were, or how faded the curtains were, or how rainwater dripped through the ceiling in the library and gathered in a rusty bucket. Heloise saw none of it. Used to her comfortable but clinical London home, she saw that Gliddon Hall was a house of love. Marianne’s three brothers spent their days galloping up and down the long hallways and laughing. In the past, Marianne had joined in with them, much to her parents’ chagrin. Now, they were happy to see that their only daughter preferred to spend her time taking a turn about the garden with her new friend or sitting quietly in her bedroom.

Of course, if they knew what Marianne and Heloise were really up to, they would be rather shocked.

Gliddon Hall was a good place to be in love. It was surrounded by endless moorland, perfect for long, windswept walks. It had numerous attics and linen-cupboards and closed-off rooms perfect for stolen kisses. Marianne’s father worked in a nearby town, and was rarely at home. Her mother kept herself busy with work around the house, and left the girls to their own devices.

The house was decorated for Christmas. Heloise helped Marianne and her family put up the 12-foot tree in the hallway, decorating it with paper chains and golden baubles.

‘There’s one thing missing,’ Marianne whispered to Heloise that night as they lay together in her bed.

‘What?’

‘Mistletoe. Come on, let’s get some.’

‘Marianne, it’s the middle of the night.’

‘So?’

‘It’s freezing out there.’

‘For me? Please?’

They got up and hurriedly dressed, throwing shawls on over their nightgowns. Marianne grabbed her penknife from her desk as they left her bedroom. Trying not to laugh, they crept down the staircase and towards the library. Marianne nearly tripped over a pile of books in the dark. Heloise surprised her by jimmying one of the French doors open. The door to the back garden swung open, and they were met with a blast of icy air.

‘Follow me,’ Marianne said, breaking into a run.

Heloise fell into step behind her. They looked like ghosts, running across the frosty lawn in the dark with their white nightgowns flapping around them. Marianne led Heloise to the small patch of woodland at the garden’s edge. Without a word, she began to climb one of the trees. Her nightgown caught on a branch and ripped, but she paid it no heed. Heloise watched, gobsmacked. Marianne never failed to surprise her. Marianne climbed up to the highest bough, where a clump of mistletoe grew in a ball. She unfolded her penknife and cut a sprig off, before clambering back down and tumbling to the ground.

‘That was undeniably quite attractive,’ Heloise said, a little shocked at just how attractive she found this muddy, bedraggled version of Marianne. Heloise leant forwards and tried to kiss her, but Marianne interjected.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘We have to do this properly.’ She held the sprig of mistletoe between their heads, and then they kissed.

*

The next morning, they woke up to see snow blanketing the garden. They dressed sloppily, layering petticoats and dresses and thick woollen tights. Heloise laughed as she watched Marianne stuff her dark hair into a shapeless knitted hat, and laughed even more when the brunette grabbed her hand and pulled her, running down the hallway and outside into the snow.

They had a snowball fight, hurling snow at each other and shouting and hollering until their sides ached and their cheeks reddened. Heloise’s usually soft hair hung in wet, tangled strands around her face, and snowflakes clung to her long eyelashes. Marianne was not embarrassed to admit that the sight made her heart stop and burn with gratitude and love and longing.

*

They returned to Gaster at the end of the holidays. The school was surrounded by the slushy remains of the snow, and the buildings were cold inside. It was the kind of cold that seeped imperceptibly under windowsills and doors and wrapped itself around your ankles, chilling you to the bone. It was the kind of cold that made Marianne and Heloise wish they didn’t have to live in shared dormitories.


End file.
